There are all kinds of subjects I just won’t touch, this may be one of those subjects that should be on that list, but the article I recently read had me scratching my head and asking, “So, what did we learn?” I couldn’t tell exactly what the point of the article was, but I felt like the lesson that probably should have been learned, wasn’t.
You can read the article by clicking on this link, but I’m going to give you the short version. This woman stopped having sex with her husband because she was tired. His requests only made her feel guilty for not doing it. Even though things at the house seemed to go noticeably better when their sex life was active, she figured it wasn’t her job to help him feel like a man. So, he eventually had an affair. Of course, she was devastated but the article ends with her essentially saying that if he couldn’t see all the rest of the stuff she did and forget the whole sex thing, it wasn’t going to work out anyway.
Dr. Henry Cloud has a great book titled, “How To Get A Date Worth Keeping.” There’s a story in the book about how he was at a singles conference and was entertaining questions. This one girl stood up who was a bit “rotund” and said it wasn’t right how people reacted to her having a bit more to love. She wanted to be accepted for who she was and not what she looked like. He told her that if she showed up to that same spot on the Sunday following the conference, he’d marry her to one of the nicest guys he knows. Literally, all he had to do was make a call and the guy would be there. She’d be married within 24 hours. She responded by saying something to the effect of, “But, I don’t know anything about his family, what he looks like, where he’s from.” Dr. Cloud’s response, “What, you can’t just accept him for who he is?” She wasn't too fond of that response.
I don’t feel sorry for either one of these people. I don’t think that what the first woman’s spouse did was the appropriate response and I believe people’s character always supersedes appearance if folks really get honest. The reason why is because of what these two stories have in common. You have two people who said, “I think 80% is good enough and I shouldn’t have to explain myself.” Each person had the ability to change certain things, adapt different behaviors, and they figured they shouldn’t have to. They were also given ample opportunity to communicate and felt they shouldn’t have to do that either. They had taken it as far as they felt they should have to and now it was up to someone else to finish the process.
Can you imagine what would happen if I started building a custom piece of furniture and handed it over to someone else while refusing to communicate the end goal? I can already tell you exactly what would happen. I’m going to get a result I didn’t want. That’s a guarantee. Sure, I could try to claim “victim status,” but everyone reading this right now knows that I deserve whatever end result I get. Even if we give the benefit of the doubt to the person finishing up my project that they have the absolute best intentions, we all know they aren’t mind readers and I’d be essentially setting them up for complete and utter failure.
You can not go through life giving anything less than 100%. You have certain skill sets and abilities that are not simply there to make you feel better about yourself. We are relational creatures. We can not walk through this life hoping that other people are going to meet us somewhere in the middle. We need to become good with giving all that we can and not worry about reciprocation. I take part in a program called First Saturday Serve. The folks that I’m helping have no way of repaying me in any way, shape, or form… and I can’t tell you how much I enjoy it.
I’m nowhere close to achieving this, but I can’t help but wonder what our relationships would be like if we approached them with the same attitude as we would someone who we knew could never repay us for our efforts. Regardless of how it was received, I think we’d likely be a lot happier.